


You're gonna make me lonesome when you go

by leiascully



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-10
Updated: 2011-10-10
Packaged: 2017-10-24 22:52:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/268781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor could tell you the exact moment he falls in love with River Song.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You're gonna make me lonesome when you go

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: 6.08 "Let's Kill Hitler"  
> Concrit: Welcome  
> A/N: All snippets of dialogue taken from [**jpgr**](http://jpgr.livejournal.com/)'s transcript [here](http://jpgr.livejournal.com/126419.html). Because I can't leave well enough alone. Thanks to [](http://bendingwind.livejournal.com/profile)[**bendingwind**](http://bendingwind.livejournal.com/) for the readthrough. Title from Madeleine Peyroux's song of the same name.  
>  Disclaimer: _Doctor Who_ and all related characters are the property of Russell T. Davies, Stephen Moffat, and BBC. No profit is made from this work and no infringement is intended.

The Doctor could tell you the exact moment he falls in love with River Song. It's the same moment he meets Melody Pond for the first time. Well, for the first time since she was speaking Baby, anyway. First there's the startling realization that she can regenerate - that certainly has him at the edge of his seat. And then there's that familiar face, all lit up by time energy, and he would swear that both his hearts skip a few beats.

 _River_. The woman who will know his name, and all that entails. And it entails rather a lot. He's been awfully distracted lately, thinking of it. Fortunately, he's found a nice long coat that hides a multitude of sins. More than all of that, though, he misses her for all the things he doesn't have to say when she's around. "Watch out for that bioluminescing plant, it's fairly deadly", for instance, and "You really don't want to mess with the Atraxi when there's a conjunctivitis outbreak, they get a bit testy". She _knows_. And she knows _him_.

He knows, he _knows_ she isn't River yet and she very much wants to kill him, right this very moment. It's what her whole life's been about up to now, in her timeline. That really shouldn't make him want to kiss her all the more, but love isn't sane or sensible. He gave away too much of himself last time, and it still wasn't enough. It's never enough for the humans. He couldn't give Rose or Martha or even poor Astrid as much of himself as they wanted, but he couldn't give them more either. He's too much for them: too long-lived, too fancy-free, too restless. He couldn't have even told them his name if he'd wanted to: the sound of it would have burned through their minds the way the vortex seared its way through Rose's brain and Donna's. But River's different. If anything, she's nearly too much for him, which is a nice challenge. She's near enough a Time Lord with all her cleverness and her mad hair.

And all of this speeds through his mind in the moments it takes her to shake off the last of the time energy from her new limbs, as he takes the bullets from the gun she'll gladly use to kill him if he gives her half a chance. He may be tired of running, but he's not _that_ tired. He won't go down without a fight. He has, after all, an appointment with destiny, or at least a fixed point in time.

Mind you, he's got to get there, and she's certainly on top of things when it comes to clever ways to bring him down. One gun, a banana, a letter opener, and a second gun: parry and thrust, nearly equally matched, and if it's a strange sort of foreplay, he wouldn't have any other. Oh, she's good, she's very, very good, and she banters like River will, but she hasn't got the better of him yet. He has to remind himself rather firmly that this won't all end with a bit of a snog and a grin, that she really does want him dead, which isn't quite like most of their encounters. Fortunately, there's still the coat.

River - no, _Melody_ (he must remember that) slinks toward him.

"I'm all yours, sweetie," she promises, and seals it with a kiss he can't help returning, thinking of the Stormcage.

"Only River Song gets to call me that," he says. (She isn't River, she won't be River for a while yet; he must resist the urge to embrace her, especially with her parents right there in the room, and oh, is he ever too old for these adolescent games, but he's been waiting _so long_ for someone to lighten his loneliness.)

"And who is River Song?" she asks. She's no coquette, but she plays it well.

"An old friend of mine," he says, editing heavily for time and timey-wimey-ness, and because she mustn't know yet. As she said to him on a beach of Alfava Metraxis, it's a story that must be lived, not told.

"Stupid name," she says, and sashays off to the window. _Melody Pond, how little you know. River Song is a name to be written in the stars._ But she's distracted, still new, breathing in the chaos of the city below her.

"Oh, look at that," she purrs, stepping up. "Berlin on the eve of war. A whole world about to tear itself apart. Now that's my kind of town. Mum, Dad, don't follow me. And yes, that is a warning."

"No warning for me, then?" he asks, letting his voice go wry.

"No need, my love," she says, and his hearts jump again to hear those words in that voice. "The deed is done and so are you."

No. It isn't his hearts beating out of time at the sight of her. He feels it now, a new burn in his veins, harsher than desire. He stumbles into the arms of his Ponds.

"Doctor, what's wrong?" Amy asks urgently, and he's so sorry for all of this, but he's helpless in the grip of the poison.

"What have you done?" he shouts. "River!" Maybe, just maybe, he'll call out to her better nature. Maybe he'll reach the woman who marries him, hidden away inside her for now. At least now he understands a bit how she felt when she found him in the wrong time with the wrong face, when she tried to make him see just what they were to each other.

"Oh, River, River, River!" she says, rolling her eyes. "More than a friend, I think."

"What have you done?" he asks again, and his legs won't hold now. Weak in the knees for her, he thinks, and worse. More than a friend. More than a companion.

"It was never going to be a gun for you, Doctor," she tells him. "The man of peace who understands every kind of warfare, except, perhaps, the cruelest."

He touches his mouth. He touches his lips that touched her lips. He should have known better. Vanity, vanity, but Melody Pond doesn't care how much she weighs: she cares that her lipstick perfectly outlines her dangerous mouth. Doesn't do to poison yourself, giving your most beloved enemy a pash. Judas, too, betrayed with a kiss. He stares at her with horror and respect.

"Kiss, kiss," she says, and she's gone.

So he's dying, he's dying, and all for a kiss, and he _loves_ her. He loves her so much his mouth is dry and his face is flushed, or perhaps it's the poison simmering through him. _Oh, River,_ he thinks, _how well they tailored you._ She fits him to a T. He'd kiss her again if he had a chance. She can't kill him twice, so he might as well make the most of it.

It's all he can do to get into the TARDIS, to get the Ponds off to find their daughter. They're his last and only hope. His mind whirls, dizzy from the toxins. They must save her, because he has to go to the lake. But time can be rewritten. But a fixed point can't be, and there's none more fixed than the Doctor's death. But she knows him, later. But she can't. Somehow he must be extremely clever, or maybe she will be, and find a way to circumvent history again. He can't do it without her. But she isn't herself now, any more than he was who she wanted to find, when he met her in the Library.

They bring her back, of course. Her mother and father, Amelia and Roranicus, the only people in the universe that he hasn't screwed up yet, even though he couldn't give them his whole hearts. Who else could bring her back from the edge of that madness? Who else could show her who she has the chance of being, one day? Rule One, after all. The Doctor lies. She knows that better than anyone, no matter who she is at the moment.

He opens his eyes and there she is: his River, shining through. He would reach for her if he had the strength, but he's too far gone, so far that at first he doesn't realize. He isn't hallucinating the glow around her. It's time, all the time she's got.

"River? No! What are you doing?"

"Hello, sweetie," she says, and she kisses him, and it's every supernova there ever was, that kiss. It's the sun and the moon and the stars and the whole of human history. It's the setting of the suns over the lost world of Gallifrey and every life he's ever saved. It's absolute magic. It's him and River. You could conquer the universe with a kiss like that. You could certainly conquer the hearts of a Time Lord.

He leaves, after the hospital, makes his excuses and slopes back off to his magic box. He can't stand hospitals. He's a selfish old man and he's done enough damage for one day. He isn't certain whether he can count her in lives saved or lives taken. It doesn't really matter, in the end. She'll tell him how the story went, one day, when they have time.

He leans against the TARDIS, feeling the gentle rumble of her engines through the wood. The TARDIS loves River, and why wouldn't she? One little bullet between friends: the TARDIS isn't fool enough to let that wreck a perfectly good relationship. When you exist in all times at once, you can afford to be forgiving.

He lifts his fingers to his lips, still feeling the tingle of River's kiss. She gave up all the rest of her lives for him. He gave her his name. It isn't fair, but it's ever so _her_. He knows her end. He just doesn't know how much time she'll have before the Library.

Anyhow, they'll make the most of it. Time is nothing next to love. A poisoned kiss is still a kiss.

He clicks his fingers and the TARDIS swings open. The Ponds will come along soon enough, the way they always do. They'll ask their questions and he'll half-answer, the way he always does. The world will go on turning and River, somewhere, will be rewriting her future in the TARDIS-blue diary.

He'll have to wait to read it (the lake, the inevitable fixed point of his demise, the really clever plan he'll have to come up with to escape destiny and make a new history with her), but he's certain it will be amazing.


End file.
